Trivia: Arguably the most popular -- and certainly the busiest -- movie leading man in Hollywood history, John Wayne entered the film business while working as a laborer on the Fox lot during summer vacations from U.S.C., which he attended on a football scholarship. He met and was befriended by John Ford, a young director who was beginning to make a name for himself in action films, comedies, and dramas. Wayne was cast in small roles in Ford's late-'20s films, occasionally under the name Duke Morrison. It was Ford who recommended Wayne to director Raoul Walsh for the male lead in the 1930 epic Western The Big Trail, and, although it was a failure at the box office, the movie showed Wayne's potential as a leading man. During the next nine years, be busied himself in a multitude of B-Westerns and serials -- most notably Shadow of the Eagle and The Three Mesquiteers series -- in between occasional bit parts in larger features such as Warner Bros.' Baby Face, starring Barbara Stanwyck. But it was in action roles that Wayne excelled, exuding a warm and imposing manliness onscreen to which both men and women could respond. In 1939, Ford cast Wayne as the Ringo Kid in the adventure Stagecoach, a brilliant Western of modest scale but tremendous power (and incalculable importance to the genre), and the actor finally showed what he could do. Wayne nearly stole a picture filled with Oscar-caliber performances, and his career was made. He starred in most of Ford's subsequent major films, whether Westerns (Fort Apache [1948], She Wore a Yellow Ribbon [1949], Rio Grande [1950], The Searchers [1956]); war pictures (They Were Expendable [1945]); or serious dramas (The Quiet Man [1952], in which Wayne also directed some of the action sequences). He also starred in numerous movies for other directors, including several extremely popular World War II thrillers (Flying Tigers [1942], Back to Bataan [1945], Fighting Seabees [1944], Sands of Iwo Jima [1949]); costume action films (Reap the Wild Wind [1942], Wake of the Red Witch [1949]); and Westerns (Red River [1948]). His box-office popularity rose steadily through the 1940s, and by the beginning of the 1950s he'd also begun producing movies through his company Wayne-Fellowes, later Batjac, in association with his sons Michael and Patrick (who also became an actor). Most of these films were extremely successful, and included such titles as Angel and the Badman (1947), Island in the Sky (1953), The High and the Mighty (1954), and Hondo (1953). The 1958 Western Rio Bravo, directed by Howard Hawks, proved so popular that it was remade by Hawks and Wayne twice, once as El Dorado and later as Rio Lobo. At the end of the 1950s, Wayne began taking on bigger films, most notably The Alamo (1960), which he produced and directed, as well as starred in. It was well received but had to be cut to sustain any box-office success (the film was restored to full length in 1992). During the early '60s, concerned over the growing liberal slant in American politics, Wayne emerged as a spokesman for conservative causes, especially support for America's role in Vietnam, which put him at odds with a new generation of journalists and film critics. Coupled with his advancing age, and a seeming tendency to overact, he became a target for liberals and leftists. However, his movies remained popular. McLintock!, which, despite well-articulated statements against racism and the mistreatment of Native Americans, and in support of environmentalism, seemed to confirm the left's worst fears, but also earned more than ten million dollars and made the list of top-grossing films of 1963-1964. Virtually all of his subsequent movies, including the pro-Vietnam War drama The Green Berets (1968), were very popular with audiences, but not with critics. Further controversy erupted with the release of The Cowboys, which outraged liberals with its seeming justification of violence as a solution to lawlessness, but it was successful enough to generate a short-lived television series. Amid all of the shouting and agonizing over his politics, Wayne won an Oscar for his role as marshal Rooster Cogburn in True Grit, a part that he later reprised in a sequel. Wayne weathered the Vietnam War, but, by then, time had become his enemy. His action films saw him working alongside increasingly younger co-stars, and the decline in popularity of the Western ended up putting him into awkward contemporary action films like McQ (1974). Following his final film, The Shootist (1976) -- possibly his best Western since The Searchers -- the news that Wayne was stricken ill with cancer (which eventually took his life in 1979) wiped the slate clean, and his support for the Panama Canal Treaty at the end of the 1970s belatedly made him a hero for the left. Wayne finished his life honored by the film community, the U.S. Congress, and the American people as had no actor before or since. He remains among the most popular actors of his generation, as evidenced by the continual rereleases of his films on home video.

Trivia: British actor Stewart Granger, born James Stewart, studied acting at the Webber-Douglas School of Dramatic Art and began getting work as an extra in British films in 1933. In the late '30s he adopted his professional name to avoid confusion with recent star James Stewart. He worked with various stage companies before getting his first lead role onscreen in So This Is London (1939). In the '40s Granger was one of British films' two top romantic leading men (along with James Mason) and a steady box-office draw, attracting the interest of Hollywood. He signed with MGM in 1950, and for the next seven years played a variety of virile "he-man" types such as romantic swashbucklers and white hunters. After becoming a U.S. citizen in 1956, Granger began free-lancing, appearing again in British films as well as in international productions in the following decade. He began accepting starring roles on TV in the early '70s. From 1950-60 Stewart Granger was married to actress Jean Simmons, the second of his three wives.

Trivia: A certified comic genius, Ernie Kovacs' great accomplishments lay in his sublimely creative, way-ahead-of-its-time television work; he was seldom shown to best advantage in films. Born in New Jersey to Hungarian immigrants, Kovacs was an unremarkable student, though he excelled in high school theatricals. A serious bout with pleurisy ended his training at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. After working with a ragtag theatrical troupe, Kovacs attained his first radio work as an announcer for Trenton's WTTM. As the station's director of special events, the mustachioed, cigar-smoking Kovacs gained a fan following by staging such zany events as lying on a railroad track as a train approached, informing the listeners at home how it felt to be so close to death! He inaugurated his television career at Philadelphia's WPTZ in 1950, where he stretched the limits of the primitive medium with wild sketches, nonsequitur sight gags and trick photography. He carried this innovative spirit into his first network program, 1952's Kovacs Unlimited. Though none of his subsequent TV projects ever achieved the high ratings that they deserved, Kovacs was the object of an intense cult worship, comprised mostly of people who were sick to death of boob-tube banality and who thrived on Kovacs' willingness to experiment. In 1954, Kovacs married singer Edie Adams, who frequently starred in his TV endeavors; she also assisted him in his feverish efforts to reclaim his two children from a previous marriage who'd been kidnapped by wife number one. While generally master of his own domain on television, Kovacs was at the mercy of Hollywood typecasting when he began his film career with Operation Mad Ball (1957). He portrayed so many obnoxious Army officers that at one point he took out a trade paper ad, imploring "No More Captains--Please." His own favorite film was the offbeat Five Golden Hours (1961), in which he portrayed a larcenous professional mourner who meets his match in professional widow Cyd Charisse. After completing his last film, Sail a Crooked Ship (1961), Kovacs concentrated his efforts on his ABC-TV monthly specials, wherein he transformed the running gag into an art form, brought inanimate objects to life, "visualized" the musical compositions of Beethoven, Stravinsky and Mahler, and hawked Dutch Masters cigars between the acts. The audacious brilliance of Ernie Kovacs came to an abrupt, tragic end when he was killed in an auto accident at the age of 42.

Trivia: Born to a middle-class French family, Capucine (pronounced Ka-poo-cheen) was a top Parisian fashion model by her mid-teens. She made her first film, Jacques Becker's Rendezvous De Julliet (1949), when she was sixteen, but international stardom would not come for another ten years, until producer Charles K. Feldman "discovered" her for the role of Princess Carolyne in the 1960 Franz Liszt biopic Song Without End. During her Hollywood stay, Capucine studied acting with Gregory Ratoff, and achieved a measure of notoriety for her portrayal of a lesbian hooker in 1962's A Walk on the Wild Side Capucine co-starred with William Holden in The Lion (1962) and The Seventh Dawn (1964). She was given a chance to display her comic know-how in the original 1964 The Pink Panther, and 20 years later was engaged to recreate her role for one of the post-Peter Sellers Panther sequels. She also worked with Joseph L. Mankiewicz (The Honey Pot [1969]) and Federico Fellini (Fellini Satyricon [1970]). Except for a final appearance in a 1989 TV movie, Capucine spent her last decade in seclusion in Switzerland, and in 1990 she committed suicide by leaping from her 8th-floor Swiss apartment.

Trivia: A recording artist from age 14, 1950s teen-idol Fabian rose to stardom with such Doc Pomus/ Mort Shuman compositions as "Hound Dog Man" and "Turn Me Loose." Fabian functioned best under the careful tutelage of Bandstand producer Dick Clark and with the benefit of the songwriting input of Pomus and Shuman. Many of his earliest film appearances (North to Alaska [1960], Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation [1962]) indicated that Fabian could be an appealing screen personality with the proper guidance. His popularity suffered a severe setback when he guest-starred as a psychopathic killer on the 1961 TV series Bus Stop; the episode, "A Lion is in the Streets," was considered so reprehensibly violent that it prompted a congressional investigation. While he continued to make records and film appearances, Fabian's career peaked in the early 1960s and went downhill thereafter. Billing himself as Fabian Forte from 1970 onward, the singer/actor has continued to work in cheap horror films and cycle flicks, and has made a few moderately successful TV guest appearances.

Trivia: One of the few non-Jewish performers to cut his teeth on the tourist resort circuit, Mickey Shaughnessy went on to appear in a WWII army revue, then spent the postwar years performing a nightclub comedy act. His secondary role in 1952's The Marrying Kind led to a long screen career, wherein the burly Shaughnessy was frequently cast as big, dumb lugs with golden hearts. While contracted with MGM, Shaughnessy appeared in Don't Go Near the Water (1955) as a potty-mouthed sailor (whose cuss words were amusingly bleeped out on the soundtrack), in Designing Women (1957) as a punch-drunk boxer, and in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1960) as the Duke; he also essayed a rare unsympathetic role in 1958's The Sheepman. As Jerry Lewis' Navy buddy-turned-wrestler in Don't Give up the Ship (1959), Shaughnessy effortlessly stole the film from Lewis, which may explain why the two were never reteamed. After closing out his film career in the early '60s, Mickey Shaughnessy revived his nightclub act, priding himself on always working "clean" even into the 1980s.

Trivia: Karl Swenson was one of the busiest performers in the so-called golden days of network radio. Swenson played the leading role in the seriocomic daily serial Lorenzo Jones, and was also heard on Our Gal Sunday as Lord Henry, the heroine's "wealthy and titled Englishman" husband. He carried over his daytime-drama activities into television, playing Walter Manning in the 1954 video version of radio's Portia Faces Life. From 1958 onward, Swenson was seen in many small roles in a number of big films: Judgment of Nuremberg (1961), How the West Was Won (1962), and The Birds (1963). One of his more sizeable movie assignments was the voice of Merlin in the 1963 Disney animated feature The Sword in the Stone. One of his last roles was the recurring part of Mr. Hansen on TV's Little House on the Prairie. Karl Swenson was married to actress Joan Tompkins.

Trivia: Beefy, puffy-faced Canadian actor Joseph Sawyer spent his first years in films (the early- to mid-'30s) acting under his family name of Sauer. Before he developed his comic skills, Sawyer was often seen in roles calling for casual menace, such as the grinning gunman who introduces "Duke Mantee, the well-known killer" in The Petrified Forest (1936). While under contract to Hal Roach studios in the 1940s, Sawyer starred in several of Roach's "streamliners," films that ran approximately 45 minutes each. He co-starred with William Tracy in a series of films about a GI with a photographic memory and his bewildered topkick: Titles included Tanks a Million (1941), Fall In (1942), and Yanks Ahoy (1943) (he later reprised this role in a brace of B-pictures produced by Hal Roach Jr. for Lippert Films in 1951). A second "streamliner" series, concerning the misadventures of a pair of nouveau riche cabdrivers, teamed Sawyer with another Roach contractee, William Bendix. Baby boomers will remember Joe Sawyer for his 164-episode stint as tough but soft-hearted cavalry sergeant Biff O'Hara on the '50s TV series Rin Tin Tin.

Trivia: The inimitable American actress Kathleen Freeman has been convulsing film audiences with portrayals of dowdy, sharp-tongued matrons since she was in her 20s. After stage work, Freeman began taking bit roles in major-studio features in 1948, seldom getting screen credit but always making a positive impression. The best of her earliest roles was in Singin' in the Rain (1952); Freeman played long-suffering vocal coach Phoebe Dinsmore, whose Herculean efforts to get dumb movie star Jean Hagen to grasp the proper enunciation of the phrase "I can't staaaand him" proved uproariously futile. Often cast as domestics, Freeman had a year's run in 1953 as the "spooked" maid on the ghostly TV sitcom Topper. Freeman was a particular favorite of comedian Jerry Lewis, who cast the actress in showy (and billed!) roles in such farces as The Errand Boy (1961), The Nutty Professor (1963) and Who's Got the Action?. As Nurse Higgins in Lewis' Disorderly Orderly (1964), Freeman weeps quietly as Jerry meekly scrapes oatmeal off her face and babbles "Oh, Nurse Higgins...you're all full of...stuff." Lewis so trusted Freeman's acting instincts that he sent her to the set of director William Wyler's The Collector (1965) in order to help build up the confidence of Wyler's nervous young leading lady Samantha Eggar. Throughout the '70s and '80s, Freeman took occasional "sabbaticals" from her movie and TV assignments to do stage work, enjoying a lengthy run in a Chicago production of Ira Levin's Deathtrap. Like many character actors of the '50s, Kathleen Freeman is frequently called upon to buoy the projects of baby-boomer directors: she was recently seen as an hysterical Julia Child clone in Joe Dante's Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990).

Trivia: The son of a Norwegian pastor, John Qualen was born in British Columbia. After his family moved to Illinois, Qualen won a high school forensic contest, which led to a scholarship at Northwestern University. A veteran of the tent-show and vaudeville circuits by the late '20s, Qualen won the important role of the Swedish janitor in the Broadway play Street Scene by marching into the producer's office and demonstrating his letter-perfect Scandinavian accent. His first film assignment was the 1931 movie version of Street Scene. Slight of stature, and possessed of woebegone, near-tragic facial features, Qualen was most often cast in "victim" roles, notably the union-activist miner who is beaten to death by hired hooligans in Black Fury (1935) and the pathetic, half-mad Muley in The Grapes of Wrath (1940). Qualen was able to harness his trodden-upon demeanor for comedy as well, as witness his performance as the bewildered father of the Dionne quintuplets in The Country Doctor (1936). He was also effectively cast as small men with large reserves of courage, vide his portrayal of Norwegian underground operative Berger in Casablanca (1942). From Grapes of Wrath onward, Qualen was a member in good standing of the John Ford "stock company," appearing in such Ford-directed classics as The Long Voyage Home (1940), The Searchers (1955), Two Rode Together (1961), and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). John Qualen was acting into the 1970s, often appearing in TV dramatic series as pugnacious senior citizens.

Trivia: After a few desultory movie appearances in the mid-1930s, rotund American actor Stanley Adams came to films permanently in 1952, to re-create his stage role as the bartender in the movie version of Death of a Salesman. His busiest period was 1955-1965, when he appeared on virtually every major TV series in America. His video roles ranged from a pompous time-travelling scientist on Twilight Zone to a wisecracking witch doctor on Gilligan's Island. Shortly after completing his last film, 1976's Woman in the Rain, Stanley Adams committed suicide at the age of 62.

Trivia: Character actor Marcel Hillaire frequently played Europeans on-stage, in cinema, and on television. Born Erwin Miller in Germany, he changed his name to Harry Furster -- a name he used in his early stage career -- during the Nazi regime and served in the army until he was discovered and imprisoned. Hillaire escaped and fled to the U.S. where he became known as Marcel Hillaire. He made his film debut playing the professor in the romantic comedy Sabrina (1954) and debuted on Broadway the following year.

Trivia: Very early in his stage career, Richard Deacon was advised by Helen Hayes to abandon all hopes of becoming a leading man: instead, she encouraged him to aggressively pursue a career as a character actor. Tall, bald, bespectacled and bass-voiced since high school, Deacon heeded Ms. Hayes' advice, and managed to survive in show business far longer than many of the "perfect" leading men who were his contemporaries. Usually cast as a glaring sourpuss or humorless bureaucrat, Deacon was a valuable and highly regarded supporting-cast commodity in such films as Desiree (1954), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Kiss Them For Me (1957), The Young Philadelphians (1959) and The King's Pirate (1967), among many others. Virtually every major star who worked with Deacon took time out to compliment him on his skills: among his biggest admirers were Lou Costello, Jack Benny and Cary Grant. Even busier on television than in films, Richard Deacon had the distinction of appearing regularly on two concurrently produced sitcoms of the early 1960s: he was pompous suburbanite Fred Rutherford on Leave It to Beaver, and the long-suffering Mel Cooley on The Dick Van Dyke Show. Deacon also co-starred as Kaye Ballard's husband on the weekly TV comedy The Mothers-in-Law (1968), and enjoyed a rare leading role on the 1964 Twilight Zone installment "The Brain Center at Whipples." In his last decade, Richard Deacon hosted a TV program on microwave cookery, and published a companion book on the subject.

Trivia: Sharp-featured character actor James Griffith set out in life to be a professional musician. He eased into acting instead, working the little-theatre route in his hometown of Los Angeles. In 1939, Griffith appeared in his first professional production, They Can't Get You Down. Following World War II service, he made his first film, Black Ice (1946). Steadily employed in westerns, James Griffith was generally cast as an outlaw, save for a few comparative good-guy assignments such as Sheriff Pat Garrett in The Law vs. Billy the Kid (1954).

Trivia: Actor Richard Collier was more a fixture in the realm of television, having made well over 1000 appearances on the small screen, but was nonetheless employed frequently for films. A native of Boston, Collier started acting as most people do, on stage in the theater circuit throughout Massachusetts. When World War II broke out, his acting career was put on hold as he served in the U.S. Army. Only after the war did Collier begin making appearances in film and the new medium of television. Some of the many television shows the actor appeared on include The Beverly Hillbillies, The Andy Griffith Show, and Batman. Collier died, at the age of 80, in early 2000.

Trivia: American actress Esther Dale concentrated her cinematic efforts on portraying warm-hearted aunts, mothers, nurses, neighbors and shopkeepers--though there were a few domineering dowagers along the way. She began her career on a semi-professional basis with a New England stock troupe operated by her husband, Arthur Beckhard. Esther was the resident character actress in stage productions of the late '20s and early '30s featuring such stars-to-be as Henry Fonda and Margaret Sullavan. She first appeared before the cameras in 1934's Crime Without Passion, filmed in Long Island. Esther then moved to Hollywood, where she popped up with increasing frequency in such films as The Awful Truth (1937) (as Ralph Bellamy's mother), Back Street (1941), Margie (1946) and The Egg and I (1947). Her participation in the last-named film led to a semi-regular stint in Universal's Ma and Pa Kettle series as the Kettles' neighbor Birdie Hicks. Esther Dale's last film, made one year before her death, was the John Wayne vehicle North to Alaska (1960), in which she had one scene as "Woman at Picnic."

Trivia: A staple of Western-themed films and television series, veteran character actor Rayford Barnes began his onscreen career with John Wayne in Hondo, and in recent years appeared on television in Walker, Texas Ranger and ER. After beginning his career in New York training with Stella Adler and the Neighborhood Playhouse, Barnes moved to San Francisco to open his own theater, and later relocated to San Francisco, where he landed his role in Hondo. A veteran of WWII, Barnes made regular appearances on such TV series as Gunsmoke, The Virginian, and Little House on the Prairie while concurrently appearing in Westerns like The Wild Bunch and The Hunting Party. Rayford Barnes died on November 11, 2000, at St. Andrews Medical Center in Santa Monica, CA. He was 80.

Trivia: In films from the early 1930s, Fred Graham was one of Hollywood's busiest stunt men and stunt coordinators. A fixture of the Republic serial unit in the 1940s and 1950s, Graham was occasionally afforded a speaking part, usually as a bearded villain. His baseball expertise landed him roles in films like Death on the Diamond (1934), Angels in the Outfield (1951) and The Pride of St. Louis (1952). He was also prominently featured in several John Wayne vehicles, including She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), The Fighting Kentuckian (1949), The Horse Soldiers (1959) and The Alamo (1960). After retiring from films, Fred Graham served as director of the Arizona Motion Pictures Development Office.

Trivia: Chubby, rubber-faced comedian Alan Carney knocked around vaudeville for years as a comic dialectician. After making his first film, 1941's Convoy, Carney signed a contract at RKO, appearing in choice supporting roles in such films as Mr. Lucky (1943). In 1943, Carney was teamed with Wally Brown (see entry 9048) as RKO's answer to Abbott and Costello. In addition to their inexpensive starring vehicles, Brown and Carney co-starred in Step Lively (1943), a musical remake of the Marx Bros.' Room Service (1938) (Wally played Chico's part, while Carney filled in for Harpo; the "Groucho" role was essayed by, of all people, Adolphe Menjou). Brown and Carney were also featured on a live USO tour arranged by the studio. After 1946's Genius at Work, RKO terminated the team's contracts. Alan Carney continued in films and TV as a supporting player, working prolifically at Disney Studios in the 1960s and 1970s; one of Carney's best latter-day roles was as Mayor Dawgmeat in the 1959 film musical Li'l Abner.

Trivia: American actor Frank Faylen was born into a vaudeville act; as an infant, he was carried on stage by his parents, the song-and-dance team Ruf and Clark. Traveling with his parents from one engagement to another, Faylen somehow managed to complete his education at St. Joseph's Prep School in Kirkwood, Missouri. Turning pro at age 18, Faylen worked on stage until getting a Hollywood screen test in 1936. For the next nine years, Faylen played a succession of bit and minor roles, mostly for Warner Bros.; of these minuscule parts he would later say, "If you sneezed, you missed me." Better parts came his way during a brief stay at Hal Roach Studios in 1942 and 1943, but Faylen's breakthrough came at Paramount in 1945, where he was cast as Bim, the chillingly cynical male nurse at Bellevue's alcoholic ward in the Oscar-winning The Lost Weekend. Though the part lasted all of four minutes' screen time, Faylen was so effective in this unpleasant role that he became entrenched as a sadistic bully or cool villain in his subsequent films. TV fans remember Faylen best for his more benign but still snarly role as grocery store proprietor Herbert T. Gillis on the 1959 sitcom Dobie Gillis. For the next four years, Faylen gained nationwide fame for such catch-phrases as "I was in World War II--the big one--with the good conduct medal!", and, in reference to his screen son Dobie Gillis, "I gotta kill that boy someday. I just gotta." Faylen worked sporadically in TV and films after Dobie Gillis was canceled in 1963, receiving critical plaudits for his small role as an Irish stage manager in the 1968 Barbra Streisand starrer Funny Girl. The actor also made an encore appearance as Herbert T. Gillis in a Dobie Gillis TV special of the 1970s, where his "good conduct medal" line received an ovation from the studio audience. Faylen was married to Carol Hughes, an actress best-recalled for her role as Dale Arden in the 1939 serial Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe, and was the father of another actress, also named Carol.

Trivia: The brother of western star Ken Maynard, Kermit Maynard was a star halfback on the Indiana University college team. He began his career as a circus performer, billed as "The World's Champion Trick and Fancy Rider." He entered films in 1926 as a stunt man (using the stage name Tex Maynard), often doubling for his brother Ken. In 1927, Kermit starred in a series for Rayart Films, the ancestor of Monogram Pictures, then descended into minor roles upon the advent of talking pictures, taking rodeo jobs when things were slow in Hollywood. Independent producer Maurice Conn tried to build Kermit into a talkie western star between 1931 and 1933, and in 1934 launched a B-series based on the works of James Oliver Curwood, in which the six-foot Maynard played a Canadian mountie. The series was popular with fans and exhibitors alike, but Conn decided to switch back to straight westerns in 1935, robbing Maynard of his attention-getting gimmick. Kermit drifted back into supporting roles and bits, though unlike his bibulous, self-indulgent brother Ken, Kermit retained his muscular physique and square-jawed good looks throughout his career. After his retirement from acting in 1962, Kermit Maynard remained an active representative of the Screen Actors Guild, lobbying for better treatment and safer working conditions for stuntpersons and extras.

Trivia: Character actor of stage, screen, and television, Joey Faye was among the last of the great burlesque comedians. Over his 65-year career he performed alongside stars ranging from Gypsy Rose Lee, Marlene Dietrich, Abbott and Costello, Tony Randall, and John Wayne. The son of a sideshow barber working with the Barnum and Bailey circus, Faye (born Joseph Palladino) started out as a Borscht Belt comic during the early '30s. While working in primarily Russian Jewish Catskills resorts, Faye starred alongside such comics as Phil Silvers, Rags Ragland, and the aforementioned duo. Faye appeared 36 times on Broadway (including a command performance of Guys and Dolls for President Lyndon B. Johnson) and for the U.S.O. His films include Close Up (1948; his film debut), How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967), and Once Upon a Time in America (1984). On April 26, 1997, the 87-year-old Faye, by then a resident of the Actor's Home in Englewood, NJ, died of heart failure.

Trivia: Corpulent, booming-voiced actor Paul Maxey, in films from 1941, was given sizeable roles (in every sense of the word) in such "B" pictures as Sky Dragon (1949) and The Narrow Margin (1952), often cast as an obstreperous villain. After appearing as composer Victor Herbert in MGM's Jerome Kern biopic Till the Clouds Roll By (1946), he was kept "on call" at MGM for uncredited character parts in such major productions as An American in Paris (1951), Singin' in the Rain (1952), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and It's Always Fair Weather (1955). Active until 1962, Paul Maxey is best-remembered by 1950s TV addicts as the irascible Mayor Peoples on the Jackie Cooper sit-com The People's Choice (1955-58).

Trivia: The son of celebrated Hungarian stage and screen actor Oscar Beregi Sr., Oscar Beregi Jr. made his American film bow in 1953's Call Me Madam. During the next two decades, the younger Beregi excelled as a movie and TV villain, often playing sadistic Nazis. He could be seen in virtually every major network TV program, making three memorable appearances on The Twilight Zone alone. Though Oscar Beregi's big-screen roles were often small, he made the most of such broadly drawn characters as the scowling U-boat commandant in The Incredible Mr. Limpet (1964) and the taunting prison guard in Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein (1974).